"AS I SEE
IT"
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Volume 4, Number 8, August 2001
["As I See It" is a monthly electronic
magazine compiled and edited by Doug Kutilek. Its purpose is to address
important issues of the day and to draw attention to worthwhile Christian and
other literature in order to aid believers in Jesus Christ, especially pastors,
missionaries and Bible college and seminary students to more effectively study
and teach the Word of God. The editor's perspective is that of an independent
Baptist of fundamentalist theological persuasion.
AISI is sent free to all who request it by writing to the editor at:
DKUTILEK@juno.com. You can be removed from the mailing list at the same address.
All articles are by the editor (unless otherwise noted) and are copyrighted but
may be reproduced for distribution, provided the following conditions are met:
1. articles must be reproduced in unedited, unabridged form; 2. the writer must
be properly credited; and, 3. such reproduction must be for free distribution
only. Permission to distribute in any other form must be secured in writing
beforehand. Permission for reproduction in Christian print periodicals will
generally be given.]
FACING "THE MUSIC"
Maybe I'm a bit 'out of touch,' but
I was frankly surprised at the heavy reader response to "Music in the
Church" (AISI 4:7), which generated at least quadruple the response of any
previous article I've written and published (and some of those were what I would
deem "controversial"). At least now I know where a really a sensitive
"hot button" is in case I want to "stir up the animals" (as
H. L. Mencken would phrase it) in the future!
Most of the letters were highly favorable, though a few were moderately
critical. Among those favorable was one which included a quote from "Miss
Manners" on the subject of applauding in church. I insert it here because
it is if interest (and, naturally, agrees with my point of view!)-
"Judith Martin, known in the secular world and through her column as Miss
Manners, answers a question about applause in church in Miss Manners Rescues
Civilization. 'Having forgotten church manners, people are substituting those
that would be proper for a performance. . . . Hard as it may be to imagine,
musicians in church are supposed to play or sing for the glory of God, not the
pleasure of the congregation (which people interestingly call the audience).
That is why there should be no applause in church. Not even for small children,
who particularly need to have the purpose of their performance explained to
them.' In response to the protest that the Bible authorizes clapping (as in
Psalm 47:1) she asks, 'Where is the Bible reference by which God commands
applause to honor musicians...?' "
Very perceptive.
--- Doug Kutilek
RUCKMAN ON LUTHER AND I JOHN 5:7:
DOLT OR DECEIVER?
I have concluded, after long experience, that Peter S. Ruckman, Sr., the chief
agitator and fomenter of the King-James-Only movement, is either a grossly inept
and inaccurate writer, or one who though knowing that what he writes is not
true, nevertheless willfully deceives his readers. Typical of this are his
claims in an article regarding the controverted reading at I John 5:7, "For
there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy
Ghost: and these three are one." Ruckman's undated article, "Does 1
John 5:7 belong in the Bible?" (downloaded from the website
www.solascripture-tt.org ) makes certain claims that are patently and provably
false. I wish to focus on just one of those false claims, and set the facts
straight with full documentation of those facts.
Ruckman matter-of-factly claims "The AV of the English Reformation and
Luther's Heilge Schrift of the German Reformation BOTH contain the Johannine
comma." I will note in passing that it is at best misleading to call the AV
("Authorized Version" or King James Version) the Bible "of the
English Reformation." It in fact had no part in the English Reformation,
which took place in the 1530s to the 1550s (well before 1611, the KJV's
publication date). The Bibles associated with that Reformation would have been
the translations of Tyndale, Coverdale, and the Geneva Bible. The KJV may have
been an indirect consequence of the English Reformation; but it certainly had
nothing whatsoever to do with its cause or conduct (Ruckman's article here under
examination--like literally everything else he has written on the Bible version
controversy--has dozens of similarly inaccurate, misleading or erroneous
assertions).
But returning to Ruckman's claim--Does Luther's translation of the Bible, Die
Heilige Schrift, in fact contain this "Johannine comma," as I John 5:7
is sometimes known? Anyone who has taken the trouble to search out the facts in
the case knows that the answer is an unambiguous, unequivocal NO!
As our first witness, we call a facsimile reprint of the final edition of
Luther's Bible issued in his lifetime. The title page of Luther's final edition
of his German Bible translation (1545) reads: Biblia: Das ist: Die gantze
Heilige Schrifft / Deutsche / Auffs new zugericht [literally, "Bible: that
is: the whole Holy Writing, German, newly revised." All spelling as in
original]. On the reverse side of leaf number CCCLXXXIIII (that is, 384), we
find the relevant section of I John chapter 5 (the verses are not numbered; this
feature was not added to the New Testament until the 1550s by a Paris printer).
In the latter part of what is now numbered as verse 6, we read (all
spelling,capitalization and dividers as an original), "Und der Geist ists/
der da zeuget/ das Geist warheit ist. ("And the Spirit is he who testifies;
the Spirit is truth.") This is followed immediately, with no gap, break or
mark of any kind by what is now numbered as verse 8: Denn drey sind die da
zeugen auff Erden/ Der Geist und das Wasser und das Blut/ und die drey sind
beisamen. ("For three are those who testify on Earth: the Spirit and the
water and the blood, and the three are together.") In this, then, Luther's
final word on the translation of the Bible into German, he most certainly did
not include the "three heavenly witnesses" as Ruckman erroneously
asserts. What about other earlier editions by Luther?
We call our second witness. I have before me a 1955 printing of Luther's
version. Its title page carries the words "Die Bibel oder die ganze Heilige
Schrift des Alten u. Neuen Testaments nach der deutschen Uebersetzung D. Martin
Luthers" ["The Bible or the whole Holy Writing of the Old and New
Testament according to the German translation of Dr. Martin Luther"]. This
1955 edition of Luther's Bible, like the 1545 edition, also omits all of the
disputed verse, and adds a very interesting footnote on the passage: "Die
in Frueheren Bibelausgaben V. 7 und 8 stehenden weiteren Worte: 'Drei sind, die
da zeugen im Himmel: der Vater, das Wort und der Heilige Geist; und diese drei
sind eins' finden sich weder in den Handschriften des griechischen Textes noch
in Luthers eigener Uebersetzung. ["The additional words of verse 7 and 8
which occur in earlier Bible editions, viz. 'There are three who testify in
Heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one' are
found neither in the manuscripts of the Greek text nor in Luther's own
translation."]. A second independent witness, therefore, declares Ruckman
to be in manifest error.
(Lest some quibble, we will note that the statement asserting that the passage
in question is not found "in the manuscripts of the Greek text" is not
quite precisely correct; a precise statement would be that the passage is absent
from over 400 Greek manuscripts of I John including all those before the 12th
century, and though found in the text of four manuscripts--all of which are late
medieval in date--none of these four agrees precisely with the text as found in
the printed Greek texts of Erasmus et al. nor do any two of the four agree
precisely among themselves (they all show clear evidence of having been
translated from Latin into Greek). Furthermore, the reading is found as an
addition in the margin of but four manuscripts, yet in the four manuscripts
which have the text written in the margin, this marginal writing is of such a
late date that in some and likely all cases, the words were unquestionably
merely copied from some printed Greek text and therefore have no independent
authority.)
The complete absence of I John 5:7 from any of Luther's various editions and
revisions of his Bible translation is confirmed by additional witnesses. First,
Karl Braune in Lange's commentary, informs us regarding the disputed words:
"Luther never translated these words, but commented upon them in his second
commentary on this Epistle, although he had pronounced them spurious in his
first commentary. They are omitted in all German Wittenberg Bibles from
1522-1545; they are first inserted in Lehmann's Quarto Wittenberg edition of
1596, although they are still wanting in later editions and in the Quarto
edition of 1620. They appear first in the Zuerich edition of 1529; the next
edition of 1531 has this passage in smaller type [Luther had no part in the
making of either of these latter two--ed.], the later editions insert it in
brackets, which were not abandoned until 1597. The Basle edition of 1552 gives
it already without brackets. Of the Frankfurt editions, the Quarto of 1582 was
the first in which this passage is inserted, although it is omitted in the
Octavo edition of the same year. It was of no avail that Luther considered these
words as a clumsy addition directed against the Arians which was wanting in the
Greek Bibles...." (Karl Braune, "The General Epistles of John,"
in Lange's Commentary, Zondervan edition of 1960, p. 156). According to Braune,
then, Luther never included the disputed words in any Bible translation made by
him, and expressly stated that he considered the words a clumsy insertion
fabricated to refute the Arians. That they were inserted into some German
language Bibles made independent of Luther is beside the point here. Luther
himself never had them in his Bible.
An examination of Luther's commentary on I John confirms the accuracy of
Braune's remarks: "7. For there are three that bear witness in heaven. The
Greek books do not have these words, but this verse seems to have been inserted
by the Catholics because of the Arians, yet not aptly; for wherever John speaks
about witnesses, he speaks about those on earth, not in heaven." (see
Luther's Works, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan, vol. 30, Catholic Epistles,
Concordia edition of 1967, p. 316). Luther expressly calls the "Johannine
Comma" a clumsily made insertion and alteration of the original text. That
he would not insert into his text what he believed was spurious is merely
consistent behaviour.
Adam Clarke (1762-1832) in his commentary on I John has a lengthy treatment of
the evidence regarding I John 5:7 which, though now somewhat incomplete (because
written in 1832), nevertheless is still worth careful attention by the reader
who wishes to be accurately informed. In that treatment, Clarke states: "It
is wanting in the German translation of LUTHER, and in all the editions of it
published during his lifetime." (Clarke's Commentary, undated Abingdon
edition, vol. VI, p. 932; Clarke's discussion of the passage is found on pp.
923-924; 927-933). Witness number four.
Thomas Hartwell Horne (1780-1862) in his very extensive and marvelously detailed
presentation of the evidence regarding I John 5:7 (which anyone interested in
the controversy will ignore at his own peril) states first "The Protestant
Reformers either rejected 1 John v. 7, or at least marked it as doubtful,"
then details the German Bible situtation:
"Thus it is wanting in the German translation of the illustrious reformer,
Dr. Martin Luther, and in all the editions of it published during his lifetime.
The last edition printed under Luther's superintendence (and which was not quite
finished till after his death) was that of 1546, in the preface to which he
requests that no person will make any alterations in it. But this great and good
man had not been dead thirty years, when the passage was interpolated in his
German translation. The first edition in which this act of injustice took place,
and in which Luther's text at least was corrupted, is that which was printed at
Frankfort in 1574. But in the edition of 1583, printed in the same place, and
also in several still later Frankfort editions, the passage was again omitted.
The oldest Wittenberg edition, which received it, was that of 1596; and in the
Wittenberg edition of 1599 it is likewise contained, but is printed in Roman
characters. In 1596 it was inserted also in the Low German Bible, printed in
that year at Hamburg. In the seventeenth century, if we except the Wittenberg
edition of 1607, which remained true to Luther's text, the insertion was
general; and since that time it is found in every edition of his German
translation of the Scriptures. (An Introduction to the Critical Study and
Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, Baker 1970 reprint of 8th, 1838 edtion, vol.
IV, p. 457; for his treatment of I John 5:7, see pp. 448-471). Witness number
five.
In volume 7 of his History of the Christian Church, Philip Schaff has an
excellent extended analysis of Luther's Bible translation (pp. 340-368). In that
discussion, he states: "Luther did not slavishly follow the Greek of
Erasmus, and in many places conformed to the Latin Vulgate, which is based on an
older text. He also omitted, even in his last edition, the famous interpolation
of the heavenly witnesses in 1 John 5:7, which Erasmus inserted in his third
edition (1522) against his better judgment" (p. 357). He then adds in a
footnote: "It [i.e., 1 John 5:7] first appeared in the Frankfort edition of
Luther's Bible, 1574. The revised Luther-Bible of 1883 strangely retains the
passage, but in small type and in brackets, with the note that it was wanting in
Luther's editions." Witness number six.
The evidence from the facsimile reprint of Luther's 1545 edition, the 1955
edition footnote, and the commentators and scholars Braune, Clarke, Horne and
Schaff is clear and all on one side: die Heilige Schrift of the German
Reformation, that is, the various editions of Luther's German Bible translation
published under his supervision and during his lifetime never included the
disputed words of I John 5:7, Ruckman's assertion to the contrary
notwithstanding.
What therefore are we to conclude about Mr. Ruckman's dogmatic assertion that
Luther's German Bible translation did in fact contain I John 5:7? We can only
conclude that his assertion is wholly erroneous and completely false. But we
must also ask why did he make such a bold yet blundering affirmation? There are
two possible answers. The first is that he simply wrote out of blissful
ignorance of the facts, not knowing the truth and not caring to expend the
effort necessary to ascertain the truth. (The truth was not that hard to
unearth; I found the above sources in just a couple of hours in a single day).
If this is the case--that he wrote from abject ignorance--then he is a buffoon,
a clown, a poseur masquerading as an authority on a subject in which only his
ignorance is profound. I am indeed persuaded that carelessness and laziness as a
student and researcher, and an amazing indifference to truth are the primary
causes of Ruckman's remarkable and repeated gross blunders.
It must be stated that gross errors arising from massive but bold ignorance
characterize Ruckman's works. He long asserted that the KJV was not copyrighted,
which I exposed as false in "The KJV is a copyrighted translation," in
Baptist Biblical Heritage, vol. IV, no. 3, October 1993, pp. 5-8. I exposed his
false and ignorant claim that the Vaticanus manuscript has never been examined
by any Protestant scholar in "Ruckmanism--a Refuge of Lies," in
Baptist Biblical Heritage, vol. IV, no. 4, January, 1994, pp. 5-6. I have
addressed many of his other errors along the way, and could generate an endless
stream of articles just correcting his Mongolian horde of errors. As long ago as
1967, Zane Hodges reviewed Ruckman's literary first-born (unfortunately not
"still-born") The Bible Babel, in Bibliotheca Sacra and wrote:
"So distorted indeed is so much of the material presented that the reader
would be well-advised to trust nothing which he cannot verify." Precious
few of Ruckman's lemming-like followers have heeded this word of caution, or
indeed have ever troubled themselves to independently verify Ruckman's claims.
If on the other hand, Ruckman knew full well that Luther did not include the
"three heavenly witnesses" in his German Bible, yet asserts that
Luther did so, then his motives must be regarded as the most deplorable--that of
willfully deceiving and misleading those who look to him (for whatever
unfortunate reason) as an expert. His ends are then better served by falsehood
that facts. If this indeed was Ruckman's design--to deceive the gullible into
believing what he knew was patently false--then he is a huckster, a charlatan, a
con man of the most deplorable sort.
We are left then on the horns of a not very perplexing dilemma: is Ruckman an
ignorant blind leader of the blind, or is he a false prophet who has put on a
hairy garment to deceive? Perhaps he is in large measure both. "By their
fruits you shall know them." Indeed. But whichever he is, he is not
credible, and those whose look to him for instruction will descend from darkness
into greater darkness, not knowing the truth and not even knowing that they do
not know the truth, because the darkness has blinded their eyes. Many are quick
to distance themselves from Ruckman because of his usually offensive manner, yet
they embrace his matter as reliable. I would challenge such men to return to the
beginning, and ask themselves: "What in particular about what I believe
regarding the KJV is derived from Ruckman directly or indirectly? Have I been
unwittingly led astray? Have I naively accepted what I was told, without
challenge, and without taking the trouble to determine whether I had been told
the truth?"
Check the facts for yourself. Unless you prefer to continue to be deceived.
---Doug Kutilek
BOOK REVIEWS
BILLY SUNDAY AND THE REDEMPTION OF URBAN AMERICA by Lyle W. Dorsett.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991. 212 pp., paper back. $15.00
I have a personal spiritual debt to the ministry of Billy Sunday, the baseball
player-turned-evangelist (1862-1935). First, my maternal grandfather, Ernest R.
Johnston, walked "the sawdust trail" during Billy Sunday's crusade in
Wichita, Kansas in 1911 (Grandma wouldn't have married him if he hadn't been
converted, which would have directly impacted my chances of being born a
generation later!). Grandpa's Christian influence in part resulted in my
mother's conversion as a grade schooler, and her faithfulness in taking me and
my siblings to church had a major part in bringing about my conversion as a
teen-ager.
Then, the Bible college professor who had the greatest impact on my thinking,
Dr. Noel Smith, while not converted through Sunday's ministry, was evertheless
restored to his walk with the Lord after years in sin during Sunday's
Chattanooga crusade of 1919. Without Sunday's influence on Smith, Smith's impact
on me would not have been. Yes, I owe a great spiritual debt to Billy Sunday.
Billy Sunday has been the subject of a handful of biographies, some so laudatory
as to be almost embarrassing, while at least one has gone to the opposite
hyper-critical extreme, finding fault with almost everything. Dorsett's volume
takes a more accurate middle ground, that of a writer who has warm admiration
and sympathy for Sunday, but who is not blind to Sunday's faults and failings.
Sunday was the son of a Civil War veteran who died during the war and never saw
his son. As a youth, Billy and his brother were bounced around several state
institutions for orphans. He completed two years of high school (most teen-agers
in that era had no education beyond the eight grade, if that much), and was not
the ignorant country rube of popular myth. His skills as a small town ball
player came to the notice of a professional team owner in Chicago, and Sunday
was given a contract. After some years playing in Chicago, Billy recognized his
life as empty and purposeless, and entered the Pacific Garden Mission, where he
heard the same Gospel he had been taught as a youth, and was saved.
As in our day, so in that, a "celebrity" conversion brought many
offers from various groups to give a testimony. Sunday worked for a time with
the YMCA, then became assistant to evangelist Wilbur Chapman, ultimately setting
out on his own as a small town evangelist in the Midwest when Chapman took a
pastorate. Sunday labored in small towns for a full decade.
Sunday had a plain-spoken, highly-dramatized, energetic, even athletic preaching
style which the high-cultured blue bloods despised but which the masses loved,
and they came in droves. In the decade of the 1910s, his fame and popularity
reached its peak, with massive large-city crusades in New York, Chicago, Detroit
and other major metropolises. With the success came problems--a very large
income (a reported $1 million in that decade, vastly above the national
average), led the Sunday's into a rather extravagant, high-consumption
lifestyle, far above the masses they were trying to reach. This led to questions
of ethics and propriety, and charges of greed. Certain other unresolved problems
concerning the handling of meetings and staff led song leader Homer Rodeheaver
to resign in 1927 after almost 20 years with Sunday. Rodey wrote a very frank
letter of explanation, which is rather revealing of internal troubles.
There were also serious spiritual problems with the Sundays' three sons (a
daughter remained a faithful believer). With Billy away much of the time, and
then with Nell joining him for his crusades, the children were largely raised by
surrogates. The sons as adults were guilty of drunkenness, immorality,
dishonesty--things Billy vigorously preached against--and one ultimately
committed suicide. These things naturally tarnished Billy's reputation and
provided fodder for a scandal-hungry press.
Sunday was one of the chief forces that led to the Volstead Act which initiated
nationwide prohibition of the manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcohol (the
18th Amendment). For this, Sunday was savagely attacked and widely hated (the
great Presbyterian scholar, J. Gresham Machen, who was unlike Sunday in almost
every respect, nevertheless said, "I like Billy Sunday because of who his
enemies are"). His popularity sagged in the 1920s, and he reverted to
holding meetings in small to medium-sized cities. All told, Sunday reportedly
preached in person to 100 million people, with some 1 million responding to his
invitations. This is far above that of any other evangelist in history.
Dorsett includes in the biography two of Sunday's sermons, Heaven, and Get on
the Water Wagon, the latter his famous attack on the liquor industry. Both are
very much worth reading. (In contrast to these, when I was assistant to the
editor of The Biblical Evangelist back in the mid-1980s, I was assigned the
editing for publication of a couple dozen contemporary newspaper transcripts of
Sunday's crusade sermons in Detroit in 1916. Surely they must have lost
something in going from the living evangelist to the dead paper and ink, for I
have never endured such tedium at any other task in my life. Some of the sermons
as reported seemed highly offensive to me because of what appeared to be
unnecessarily harsh brow-beating of the audience by Sunday. Perhaps 4 or 5 of
those edited sermons were eventually published in TBE).
With his limitations and human frailities, Billy Sunday was mightily used by God
to bring hundreds of thousands to Christ, and to push back America's "day
of reckoning" with God. Where he preached, saloons and brothels often
closed, and jails went begging for inmates. Lives were literally and permanently
transformed for the good. These are manifestly not the consequences of Billy
Graham crusades today, nor is anyone else doing the great and necessary work
that Sunday did. "It was a different time," some will say, but human
nature has not changed, nor has the human need for conversion, forgiveness and
peace with God. Who will, under God, seek to fill Sunday's long-empty shoes?
---Doug Kutilek
BIBLE REVISION, ed. By Philip Schaff. Philadelphia: American Sunday-School
Union,
1979. 192 pp.
In the years just before and just after the appearance of the English Revised
Version (New Testament, 1881; Old Testament, 1885), numerous books were issued
by proponents of the revision of the King James Version to justify the
undertaking of such revision, or to defend the revision made. Among notable
titles on this theme were J. B. Lightfoot, On A Fresh Revision Of The English
New Testament (London: MacMillan and Co, 1871); Alex. Roberts, Companion to the
Revised Version of the English New Testament (London: Cassell, Petter Galpin
& Co.); and, Talbot W. Chambers, A Companion to the Revised Old Testament
(New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1885)--this last has a list of all the OT
translators, British and American, and some account of their scholarly
achievements and qualifications. If these volumes were given an open and honest
reading by opponents of any Bible translation revision of any sort, they would
immediately see the error of their way.
I stumbled across another book of this genre, the book herein reviewed, in the
library stacks at Wichita State University, being previously unaware of its very
existence. It is different from other books of this type in that it is a
compilation of essays on various aspects of the revision written by members of
the American revision committee. The 19 separate chapters include "The
Hebrew Text of the Old Testament" by Howard Osgood, a Baptist, and
"Inaccuracies of the Authorized Version in Respect of Grammar and
Exegesis" by A. C. Kendrick, another Baptist scholar. There are also essays
by William Henry Green, the great Princeton Old Testament scholar; Joseph Henry
Thayer, the Greek lexicographer; James Strong, of concordance and cyclopedia
fame; along with others of note. Schaff introduces the volume with an accounting
of the revision translators and the principles followed in the making of their
revision.
There are occasional factually errors or misstatements here and there, or
incomplete information, but on the whole, this is a superb little book on the
necessity of revising the KJV if the ordinary English reader is to have as
direct access to the inspired oracles of God as honest scholarship can provide.
--- Some quotes from Bible Revision, edited by Philip Schaff--
"An ancient translation, preserved on account of the veneration which is
felt towards it, may even do harm to religion by obscuring thoughts which would
otherwise be clear." (Theo. D. Woolsey, p. 45)
"If the Bible is intended for the less educated of the Christian Church it
needs, in many places, to be translated out of the older into the later
English." (G. Emlen Hare, p. 49)
"Within the two hundred and sixty-eight years which have elapsed since the
publication of the Current Version, Biblical learning has advanced with a
progress comparable to that which has obtained in other departments of
learning." (ibid.)
"If, then, it is the imperative duty of the Church to give the heavenly
oracles to men, each in his own language, it is equally her duty to give them to
men in a pure and unadulterated form. The millions in both hemispheres who speak
the English tongue are entitled to receive the Bible in a form which represents
the inspired original with the utmost ccuracy it is possible to attain. This has
always been recognized in the history of our English version thus far, which, as
at present authorized, is the result of several successive revisions, each being
an advance upon its predecessor." (William Henry Green, p. 60)
"When the question is raised whether the time has now arrived for a fresh
revision of the English Bible, one important consideration affecting the answer
to be given is to be found in the immense strides taken in Biblical scholarship
since the reign of King James." (Ibid., pp. 60-1)
"We assume that the English translation of the Bible should be as faithful
as possible to the inspired original, so that the unlearned reader may be as
nearly as possible in the place of the learned one. There are some who
practically deny this self-evident proposition. They would have us retain
time-hallowed errors in our version; they appeal to popular prejudice."
(Joseph Packard, p. 80)
"But it may be safely said that no Christian doctrine or duty rests on
those portions of the text which are affected by differences in the manuscripts;
still less is anything essential in Christianity touched by the various
readings. They do, to be sure, affect the bearing of a few passages on the
doctrine of the Trinity; but the truth or falsity of the doctrine by no means
depends upon the reading of those passages." (Ezra Abbott, p. 92)
"[T]he most important reason of all [for a revision of our version of the
Scriptures] arises from the progress which, since 1611, has been made in
grammatical and exegetical science, as applied to the Scriptures. That such
progress should be made would be but to bring Biblical science into accordance
with all the other developments of the last two centuries. In every field of
intellectual action during that period, the progress of the human mind has been
rapid, and its achievements unprecedentedly great. It would be strange, indeed,
if in this highest of all departments of knowledge it should have failed of
corresponding advancement. And it has not. In all the fields of sacred learning
the most eminent abilities and the most conscientious industry have been
diligently employed, and in none, perhaps, more than in the sphere of the
language and interpretation of the New Testament." (A. C. Kendrick, p. 99)
GIVE THE WINDS A MIGHTY VOICE by Daniel P. Fuller. Waco, Tex.:
Word, 1972. 247 pp, hardback.
The name of Charles E. Fuller (1888-1968) is historically bound up with two
things: "The Old Fashioned Revival Hour" radio broadcast, and Fuller
Theological Seminary, the former a boon to the cause of Biblical Christianity,
the latter truly a bane.
Charles Fuller was a native Southern Californian. His father was a man of
considerable wealth, gained chiefly through the rapidly expanding Southern
California citrus industry. Charles himself also prospered in the citrus
business, and also in land development in the 1910s and 20s. Charles' father was
a committed Christian and devoted his wealth to the cause of missions, providing
substantial support at one time for 56 missionaries. He even made two round-the
world trips to visit missionaries on the field.
Charles fell under this influence and though a professing Christian (whose
faith--what there was of it--had been seriously undermined by the teaching of
evolution when he was in college), had no real saving faith until he heard the
wrestler-and-boxer-turned-evangelist Paul Rader at the Church of the Open Door
in Los Angeles in 1916. Up to this time, Fuller had been a church member, Sunday
school superintendent and even an elder in the church. After his conversion, he
taught an ever-expanding Sunday school class, enrolled as a student at Biola,
and after being, more or less forced out of the Presbyterian church because of
his evangelistic activities, founded and pastured for eight years Calvary Church
in Placentia, California (1925-1933). When the Presbyterians refused to ordain
him, Fuller sought and received ordination at the hands of a group of Southern
California Baptist pastors associated with the Baptist Bible Union, the strongly
fundamentalist and separatist group led by J. Frank Norris, W. B. Riley and T.
T. Shields. Calvary Church was founded upon the fundamentals of the faith and
was focused on missions and evangelism (of the church's first year income of
$6,300, fully $3,500 was given to missions! How many churches match those
percentages today?)
Fuller became chairman of the board of Biola at the time that school went
through a great upheavel due to the heterodoxy of one the professors; the
professor was purged, several other professors resigned in protest, as did some
board members, but the school was saved for orthodoxy (the action at Biola, and
its consequences for good stands in marked contrast to what happened at Fuller
Seminary in the early 1960s, when the conservatives left in protest of the
toleration of apostasy among the faculty).
Even from youth, Charles had had an interest in electrical means of
communication (telephone and telegraph). As a preacher, he early on saw the
value of radio as a means of communicating the Gospel. He first employed radio
for evangelism in 1925, when this medium was just 5 years old. It was in fact a
desire to devote himself fully to a radio ministry that led to his resignation
as pastor.
From 1933 until his death, Fuller was a full-time radio preacher. Over those
years, there were many changes in stations--sometimes on networks, sometimes on
independent stations, many changes in format--sometimes live, and sometimes via
recording, and several changes of the name of the programs (most of the time
there was more than one broadcast per week). At his peak in the 1940s, Fuller
was on the Mutual network plus numerous independent stations (almost 500 in
all), had by far the most listened to radio program of any kind in America, paid
over $1.5 million for radio time annually, and had letters reporting on average
400 conversions a week, out of a listening audience of a reported 20 million.
When speaking at a conference of some 4,000 Southern Baptist preachers, Fuller
asked how many had Fuller converts in their congregations. Two-thirds of the
pastors raised their hands. Via foreign stations, Fuller was heard all over
Europe (especially in The U. K.) and almost world-wide on shortwave.
It is worth noting that the national networks were vigorously opposed to
fundamentalist radio preachers. The CBS and NBC networks had a policy of
refusing to sell time to religious broadcasts, though they did give away time to
selected religious leaders, namely Catholic Bishop Fulton Sheen and rank
modernist Harry Emerson Fosdick. These freebie broadcasts never had much of an
audience, simply because they had no message that satisfied the heart and soul
of sinners needing peace with God.
In contrast to the great good Fuller's radio preaching accomplished, the legacy
of Fuller Seminary is largely a great negative. As far back as 1939, Fuller felt
impressed of God to start a preacher and evangelist training school. Plans were
repeatedly altered and delayed--should it be a college or a seminary? When
should it begin, and who should lead it? Ultimately, a seminary was agreed upon,
and the year of inception was 1947, in Pasadena, California. There was an
impressive faculty of four and nearly forty students that first semester.
But the seeds of Fuller Seminary's theological destruction were planted from the
beginning. At that time, there was a great debate among conservative American
Christians over the proper approach to denominational apostasy. The
fundamentalists, appealing to the plain teaching of Scripture, insisted that the
only proper approach for an individual who found himself in a church doctrinally
apostate, or for a conservative church in apostate-controlled or
apostate-tolerant denomination was immediate withdrawal as a testimony against
error.
The National Association of Evangelicals, in contrast, insisted that
conservatives should stay in the modernist-infected organizations, continue to
participate in and support these churches and denominations, engage in dialogue
with the apostates, and try to turn the tide from within. This is the philosophy
of neo-evangelicalism. The founder and formulator of this philosophy, indeed the
man who coined the term "neo-evangelical" was Pastor Harold Okenga
(pronounced 'AH-ken-gay'), pastor of the large and influential Park Street
Church in Boston. Okenga had been chosen by Fuller to be the first president of
Fuller Seminary.
Okenga set the course for the school in his inaugural address in 1947: "We
do not believe and we repudiate the 'come-outism' movement. We want our men to
be so trained that when they come from a denomination, whatever that
denomination is, they will go back into their denomination. . . ." (p.
215). Among the first 900 graduates of Fuller, the author relates that 103 were
from the United Presbyterian Church--USA, 77 were from the American Baptist
Convention, 68 were from the Conservative Baptist Association, 29 were Baptist
General Conference, 16 were United Church of Christ, etc. All of those listed
were then and are now heavily corrupted by apostasy and modernism. This attitude
of toleration of apostasy in the midst, and willingness to continue to associate
yourself as a co-laborer with enemies of the Gospel led to the toleration of
apostasy among the faculty of Fuller Seminary and its soon loss to the very
apostasy it was established to oppose.
A second seed of destruction planted from the beginning was an obsession with
"intellectual respectability" (virtually Okenga's exact words) that
is, a strong desire to impress apostate scholars with the quality of
conservative scholarship. "Hey, we're smart guys, too!" The fact is,
no matter how intelligent and academically accomplished conservative scholars
are (and I am fully in favor of the highest standards of scholarship among
Christian leaders), the apostates "ain't gonna give us no respect."
The problem is not an intellectual one but a spiritual one. We cannot and will
not convince committed apostates by our degrees and scholarly treatises; the
weapons of our warfare are not carnal (or Carnell!). We must have the power of
God upon our efforts, as did the meagerly-educated D. L. Moody, Sam Jones, Gipsy
Smith, Billy Sunday and others of their stripe, or our efforts are worth
nothing. Of course, high intellect and high spiritual power are not mutually
exclusive (all the great leaders of the Reformation, for example, were
highly-trained scholars). And they were all "come-outers."
The seminary stirred up controversy almost from the beginning. The Presbytery of
Southern California refused to admit three Presbyterian faculty members into
that body because of Charles Fuller's strong fundamentalist reputation (later,
after the school had drifted from its moorings into the murky waters of
unbelief, all Presbyterian faculty members were welcomed into that apostate
Presbytery). A visiting Hungarian professor--invited to teach because of his
academic credentials, was a known rejector of Biblical inerrancy. When the
Revised Standard Version came out, Fuller faculty--unlike all fundamentalists
and most evangelicals--refused to condemn it, though it systematically
undermined OT messianic prophecies, especially Isaiah 7:14, and was tainted by
the translators' theology (30 of 31 translators were modernists). Second
president John Carnell's 1959 book onapologetics created another furor; Carnell
died a suicide less than adecade later--a fact the author completely ignores.
By 1963, three of the four founding professors of Fuller felt compelled to leave
as the school had drifted badly. Among those now outside the conservative camp
was Charles Fuller's own son Daniel, now dean of the school. Inexplicably,
Charles had allowed his son to be educated in part at apostate Princeton
Seminary, with additional study under the father of neo-orthodoxy (apostasy by
another name), Karl Barth, in Switzerland. I can only ask: what was he thinking?
In the decades if the 1960s, Fuller Seminary added a school of missions and a
school of psychology.
Charles Fuller died in 1968, leaving a legacy as God's means of bringing
multiplied thousands to Christ through radio, and yet also having lent his name,
prestige, leadership, resources and influence to the founding of a school that
has abandoned and undermined every one of the fundamental doctrines that he
preached for 45 years.
Naturally enough, in this volume, Daniel Fuller glosses over the doctrinal
apostasy of Fuller Seminary, of which he was himself a significant part. The
departure of all but one of the founding faculty as well as certain other
conservative faculty members in 1962-1963 is passed over in a single phrase. If
the reader wants the real inside story on the apostasy of Fuller Seminary, he
must read the insider accounts of one of those original faculty members, Harold
Lindsell, in his highly informative books The Battle for the Bible (Zondervan,
1976), pp. 106-121; and The Bible in the Balance (Zondervan, 1979), pp. 183-243.
These volumes triggered massive shock ways in numerous American denominations
when they were first issued. For a thorough account by a respected historian of
Fuller's founding and subsequent apostasy, see Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller
Seminary and the New Evangelicalism by George M. Marsden (Eerdmans, 1987).
In comparing this biography of Charles Fuller with that by Wilbur Smith, A Voice
for God (reviewed in AISI, 2:6), this is in almost every way substantially
better--better written, with the final 20 years of Fuller's life covered, less
gushing with effusive praise and accolades, and with a closer, more personal
look, though with the notable deficiencies mentioned previously.
---Doug Kutilek